Ok, so let’s all move on from the fact that it’s been over a year since I’ve written. I know, I know…baaaad blogger.

Now then. There’s one thing that my musical exploits have reflected in my civilian life: Food. I suppose food and music have collided in the past…but, well…I’m gonna blog about it.

So the more I got good at “preparing dishes” (as opposed to “making food”), I would find myself busily going about a recipe when I would think to myself “y’know…this could maybe be bammed up with a bit of [random ingredient]”. Sometimes it would work (coffee and rosemary in beef stew) and sometimes it wouldn’t (beef stew and rosemary in coffee). But it’s making a connection between two tastes you savoured independently and then marrying them successfully that’s quite a thrilling and fulfilling accomplishment.

I find that it’s the same for music. When producing or arranging a song, I try to find instruments and sounds that will compliment it but that are also not your most expected elements. Some great examples (well, great to me) are the dark tom tom drums in my song “(Never) Let It Go” or the trumpet part in “It Was Love“.

With no false modesty, I think I’m pretty good at finding these matches. But sometimes, like Bovine Brew coffee, it just doesn’t work out. My latest song release, “Until“, is a perfect example of both a musical match and a music mismatch. Initially I sang the track like you can hear on the demo:

Darn right I’m right! But despite the Lyndsie coup, the song was still languishing under another misguided musical attempt: the introduction of a harmonica during an instrument break. Despite the old college try from my producer, it still sounds like a braking freight train. Listen again to the above track and skip to 3:19.

Now as you wait for your hair to quit standing on end, enjoy the much better final version where we swapped out the harp for some subtle musical shadings instead of something that sounds like a wounded raccoon.

From the defunct homophonic Toronto trio Bass is Base to the woofered-out lowriders of the West-Coast, everybody loves bass! When I make demos, the bass part is the most challenging since I’m least familiar with the rules-of-engagement of the “dad guitar“. I know there are principles out there that tell you to pair it with the drums or the rhythm guitar to help hold down the foundation of the song. Regrettably, I don’t really know what that means so I tend to approach arranging a bass line like I do any other instrument I’m adding to the mix: it’s just another melody line that complements the main melody…just lower. That approach seems to work well enough and at the very least it makes the song a lot more interesting than if I just relegated the bass to being your flatulent sounding “braaap!….braaap!” of beer music tuba fame. So with my self-deprecation and fart-references out of the way, here are three songs with effective bass lines that stand out in my mind. (bass comes in at 0:52) (bass really comes in at 1:15) (bass comes in when Noel says “get a little bass”(?): 0:45) Oh what the hell…one more legendary bass work from the 80’s!: (it’s subtle…you’ll have to watch for it. “It” being the hot pink bass guitar) Blue Blue Satellite

The title track is next (track 6). And is probably the densest track I recorded. There’s everything from synth, to strings, to organ, to a pick slide which, next to the windmill, defines Rock ‘n Roll.

Tim Watson, producer Dean’s brother, came in to lay down the drums and man, how I loved seeing another of my tracks just crushed. Noel Gallagher was right when he said make sure you have a good drummer. Ironically however, Tim struggled to perfect one of the most bombastic fills near the swell of the song and after over 10 takes he had to settle. I thought all 10+ were spectacular but even when he left I could tell he wished he could have nailed. Soon after though, Dean and I listened to the entire track he laid down and it turns out the fill he was struggling to get he actually nailed earlier in the song, so a lil’ cutting here and a lil’ pasting there and voila! Edited rock ‘n roll!

Despite all my talk of acoustic melancholia and what-not, I still love rock music and I swell with pride knowing there’s at least one song on the record that brings a bit of oomph rather than the more typical zzzzz…

So my studio time has ended. We didn’t quite finish everything up so I’m going to have to go back in to record one last track. Then comes the editing, mixing, mastering and the most important part: running the entire record through the T-Pain Super AutoTune 5000™.

But I can tell you the tracks that we recorded, thus officially revealing the tracklist for The Learning Days:

Going to take a little travel hiatus but it’s going to be nothing but The Learning Days, The Learning Days, The Learning Days once I’m back and hopefully the record will be finished just in time to cheer y’all out of the winter blues(…or drive you deeper into them, depending on which tracks you listen to).

I’m a songwriter. I’m not a guitarist, I’m not a drummer, I’m not a keyboardist, I’m not a bassist.

The good news: As I head into the studio in September there are such things as “session musicians” who will play all those instruments for you on your record!

The bad news: I’m too cheap to pay for session musicians.

But that’s actually still good news because I’m something of a multi-instrumentalist which means I’m familiar with the mechanics of several instruments despite sucking at them individually. The good news being, for the tracks that will have a fuller production I’ll be forced to come up with creative ways to record these instruments without betraying the fact that I’m actually quite lousy at them. And the way I’ll do this is to use them in non-traditional ways(i.e. cheat) that can only give the songs a fresher, unique, less-is-more feel to them…

So it’s win-win: I save money and you, the potential listener, will get a feast for your ears! But be forewarned for what you’re in for…I emailed my producer today asking if his studio had an accordion, melodica or Moog I could tinker with…which should be extra interesting seeing as I don’t know what a Moog is…